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I really didn't like Vista at first. Too many annoying things. Now I've tweaked it a bit I prefer itover working on XP actually. There are some things I replaced instantly though like the file explorer.It annoyed the hell out of me. I didn't like the changes at all.

The biggest reason I'm using Vista vs XP though is the performance which is rather ironic since mostare complaining about Vista's performance being worse than XP. XP in my case is much slowerthan Vista. It mostly has to do with the quad-core processor in the system. XP just doesn't make gooduse of it. Multitasking in XP is hardly possible. I've tried some multi-threaded programs on XP vs Vista.Vista was able to make 100% use of all cores where XP only managed to use 70-80% with the same program.In Vista things got done quite a bit faster. Startup of programs when other things are running is also wayfaster on Vista.

When you have to run an Oracle database, web application server, java ide and all kinds of other stuffsimultaneously it really starts adding up.

Vista has it's share of problems and a lot of things definitely need fixing but right now it will have to do.

Personally I'd love to have ebook reader. I have tons of books and other reading material.The problem is.....80% of the books and such I have are PDF's and the PDF format is just notvery good for the current ebook readers. It doesn't support reflowing pages and such so it willneed to scale down. The screens on the current crop of readers the screen are just too smallin that case. There's only 1 larger one out right now (the iRex Iliad I believe) but it also has atouchscreen and some other features I don't want which makes it way too expensive.

The next generation is supposed to get much larger screens (see the Hanlin V9 that's announced,it looks REALLY interesting). When I can easily read my pdf books I'll get one instantly. I'm gettingway too tired of reading the books on a laptop or on the pc and there are too many of them tobuy as a paperback, I'd run out of space at home

In case of java the best imho is IntelliJ IDEA. It might be commercial but it saves me so many headaches.I've tried Eclipse and keep trying it with every new release but I end up going back usually within 30min.

Eclipse has loads of features, mostly because of all the plugins. Which is both a good and bad thing.It's a pain to find all the right plugins. I'd rather have everything I need or 99% of it available right away.

The thing is, featurewise Eclipse probably surpasses IDEA. Most people compare IDEA and Eclipse and say,Eclipse can do that too and more. In practice you hardly need most of the extra features. IDEA rocks inthe usability department. It's hard to describe but IDEA never gets in my way, it only asks me stuff when it reallyreally has to and then lets me move on where I was in the first place. Eclipse on the other hand annoys the heckout of me. It seems everything takes too many keystrokes and is placed just a menu too far away. Especially theimplementation of "quick fix" in Eclipse is imo terrible. An example comparing the quick fix in IDEA/Eclipse:

Type "Hashtable somen_"You want to import Hashtable? Well, in Eclipse you have to move the cursor back to Hashtable which interrupts your workflow.In IDEA you press alt+space and keep on typing. IDEA also automatically removes unused imports which in Eclipse it takes anotherquick fix keystroke.

It's all the little things in IDEA that are amazing. I don't need all the fancy features that I'll never use. I rather save hundreds ofkeystrokes each day. Eclipse just gets in my way. It forces me to work a certain way and always distracts me from what I'm doingand that's coding. IDEA on the other hand takes care of most of the annoying work and lets me focus on the important stuff.

Of course it's a very personal opinion. Eclipse is a great editor and you can get all the work done. It's just not for me

I know where you're coming from. I'm mostly a java developer and really enjoy programming in it (for the right tasks, in ourcase most stuff needs to run on unix, linux and windows and are mostly services/webapps). But one thing I'd never ever dois write a java applet. It's easy to use separate JRE's normally but the plugins are indeed terrible. When someone mentions aprogram needs a certain version of java plugin I already start worrying. I agree they really need to fix that if they want itto be of any use at all.

Just to summarize the possibilities that would be really nice to have:

- make it very easy to distinguish between FARR specific options and program parameters- be able to handle the modifiers with plugins, all of them or partially which means "+folder_music" could be handled by the plugin for instance, "+mp3" scoring by FARR- maybe even the ability to let the plugin change the modifiers that are used? (would probably be more complicated)- let the plugin have access to all the FARR options. Specifically the SearchFolders, Pattern Scoring and such(less of a priority since I can easily load %APPDATA%\DonationCoder\FindAndRunRobot\FindAndRunRobot.ini and get the values from there if needed)- being able to use modifiers on alias/plugin results. (For instance use locate to return a subset of 500 files which FARR filters afterwards with "+folder_music")

There are also some options in the plugin framework I'm clueless about when to use them and what they do precisely. Trying as much as possible withtrial and error to figure things out but I'll probably get stuck on some items

Aahh, rjbull, thanks for noticing that. That would explain it. I'm using 3.0.7.7010 myself so I never hadthat problem. Hopefully upgrading to 3.0.7.9220 fixes the problem cettolox had if he was running the bugged version.

I’m still working on the locate32 plugin and nitrix had some great ideas on how to use it.Now I’m running into some problems.

What I tried to do:

- used the regex “loc”- make an alias that does the following:dosearch loc –p d:\music –ld $$1 +open_winamp

Why this doesn’t work:

FARR doesn’t seem to recognize the +open_winamp option when a regular expression is used.

What I tried to do next:- create an alias for the plugin named “locate”- make an alias that does the following:dosearch locate –p d:\music –ld $$1 +open_winamp

Why this doesn’t work:

When using an alias and using the searchstring_lc_nokeywords parameter the options like “-p” and “-ld” get stripped too. So I can’t use that searchstring. It would also be really hard to distinguish minusoptions (for instance –mp3) that belong to FARR or belong to locate.

What I tried to do next:

Instead of having the locate alias use “-p” for directories and “-ld” for directories only, I filtered out the “+” options in the plugin so I can use the FARR searchfolders like “+folder_music” and options for directories only like “+\”. I open the FindAndRunRobot.ini and read the SearchFolders section to do that (Mouser, is there a way to question SearchFolders from inside the plugin?).

The options get translated back to the regular “-p” and “-ld” options and it loops through the matched directories and adds those files found to the results. Btw, people might say I could just return the results to FARR and let it do all the filtering in case of “+folder_music” but the problem is locate would just return ALL the results at first which is basically your whole harddisk .

This is working sofar but I’m running into one more problem. When I return the results I tell FARR to add a score to the files (also tried telling FARR to do matching after returning results as well). It does add a score but it totally seems to ignore pattern scoring. If I do “locate +folder_music +mp3 <artistname>” then locate returns the results but the “+mp3” pattern scoring doesn’t add the score to mp3 files. If I do “+folder_music +mp3 <artistname>” it does add the scoring. Does the pattern scoring work with aliases/plugins at all? I would expect FARR to apply the + modifiers to the result. In case of “+folder_music” and “+mp3” I’d expect all the results to match the first modifier and add the score to mp3 files that are found.

I could read the pattern scoring from the ini file as well but I’d rather not if it’s not needed. It would be great if I could just pass the results back and let FARR take care of the rest.

I'll check if I can find a registry key. That's a very good idea. The less people have to configure, the better

@cettolox:

Mmh, it's very strange. If locate.exe by itself (at a commandprompt for instance) doesn't work it looks like a problemwith locate, not with the plugin. The plugin depends on the output of locate.exe. As far as I can tell locate.exe usesthe same databases as the graphical client by default. So you should get output at the commandprompt at least.

Thanks for the suggestion. I've been thinking about that myself as well. I'll probably change both location options in the advancedconfiguration to 1 and just ask for the directory where locate32 is installed (and set it to the default location by default) insteadof asking for the .exe files.

For now:If someone hasn't changed the location and tries to type "loc <something>" and the paths aren't correct you'll be notified thoughand the advanced configuration dialog comes up immediately. So it shouldn't be confusing for new users in that sense though.

If possible try with the new FARR (I'm running 2.00.142 and the plugin was developed with that version as well), there were a lot of changes since 2.00.56.I briefly looked at the history/changelist and it looks like I'm using some functions that weren't available in your version.

I have no idea Hobiedave. What is the path you've set it to? Make sure it points to locate.exe (not locate32.exe) and include thatin the path (mine is F:\Programs\Utilities\Locate\Locate.exe for instance). Other than that it should work if it shows up in your pluginslist.

It now contains a dcupdate file as well so the next time it should be able to update it through the dcupdater tool (hopefully if all goes well ).

---------------Version 1.00.02---------------

- loc /? and loc -h show the available locate options in the resultswindow- loc /u and loc /U update the locate databases (info is provided in the statusbar when starting and when finished) It uses Updtdb32.exe, it's the commandline version for updating the databases. You won't be able to use the commandline options though! It's just started without parameters which defaults to updating all databases. (If you already had the plugin you shouldn't have to set the location of Updtdb32.exe, it defaults to the same location locate.exe is in)- Show all results mode added. It can be enabled/disabled in the Advanced Configuration. It's turned on by default

@jgpaiva:

Yeah I figured that too so I took out both the loc update and loc help options. You could still search for them with loc "update" but that would justbe annoying

The following options will start an update of the databases in the next version: loc /u , loc /U , loc update

Basically what this does is use the Updtdb32.exe command to update the databases (you can set the locationof that command in the Advanced Configuration although you shouldn't have to set it since it defaults to thesame directory location as locate.exe). You won't be able to use the commandline options of Updtdb32.exe though!It will be like executing the Updtdb32.exe command without parameters. Maybe there will be more configurable optionlater but hopefully this will do for now

It will show the status in the statusbar. It will let you know the update is starting and also when it has finished.

Btw, it executes the update process in a new thread so it shouldn't block FARR usage.

Hehe, just let me know the option and I'll implement it as soon as I can. Still have a lot to learnabout the options and everything in the plugin api. Might take a while but I'll get there Probably going to need a lot of help from Mouser and other pluginmakers though hehe.

Thanks for being the first to try it nitrix-ud . You like being on dangerous ground?

The exception is strange though. I quickly tried some different situations but can't reproduce the exception error.

If anyone else has gets the exception error as well let me know. Let me know what windows version,where locate is located and such. Maybe I'll be able to reproduce it then. Hate exception errors

Let me know if there are any other strange problems.

Lol, just wanted to post the above and you beat me with another reply nitrix

If you can mail me with some ways you use or like to use FARR that would be great! (okke@dcmembers.com).I'm very new to FARR, the way aliases work and other more complex things like that so any help would be appreciated.Your suggestion sounds very interesting so I'd love to help out if I can. Good way to learn some more about FARR as well.If I'm stuck I can always "bother" Mouser, hehe.

Let me know if you run into any problems. Since it's the first time I've written a plugin for FARR and the Delphiframework itself is new as well there could be some small issues. Sofar I haven't had any problems with it myselfbut you never know how people are going to use it

I'm looking into how I can add some useful scoring and other more complex stuff. Right now it just lists the resultsin the FARR results window. If anyone has an idea on how to best add the scoring......

I just read some other posts and just to be clear, the plugin returns the results in the FARR results window.It uses the locate.exe commandline executable to return the results and shows them inside FARR . FARR itselfhandles the execution. If locate returned the directory you can browse it in FARR as well and so on.

Btw jmj, thanks for writing such an excellent searchtool!! It's amazingly fast and works great together with FARR!

Lol Armando, love the "head in the bag" icon. It actually almost looks like me

Hi everyone,

Mouser was talking about me. He's so enthousiastic but I'm still in "hopefully I didn't do any stupid things or forgot something mode"since it's the first plugin I've written, hadn't touched Delphi in years and have been using FARR only since latest beta.

I wanted to write plugins for FARR but really don't like using C++ so decided to use Delphi instead. I had to convert the C++ frameworkto Delphi. To test the framework I decided to make a simple plugin which was actually useful. This ended up being a Locate32 plugin.Maybe the locate32 integration could have been done differently as well since I'm just learning about the more complex things in FARRbut it works very well for me. Hopefully others enjoy it as well.

I'll try working with Mouser and get it released today or tomorrow.

Below are some usage details for people who like to know how it works. The used optionsare from locate itself (locate.exe /?). In the Adv Configuration of the plugin you'll be ableto set the location of locate.exe and the maximum found files (sames as -ln:<number> option).You can overrule that maximum if you use the -ln:<number> in the search if you don't wantto change it in the adv config.

Hopefully it's useful to everyone. Btw, if anyone has suggestions, tips or anything else, please yell. I'm not a Delphi developer (I normallyprogram in Java, Python and others) so there could be things in the framework code as well that could be better. Don't hesitate tomake comments, I like to learn from my mistakes

And Mouser, thanks for all the help and for being a great friendly host!